daring-rss

Unsurprisingly given that I went a few years without selling DF-branded shirts, while I procrastinated on launching a modernized new store (long story short: Shopify is a killer platform — the new store now supports everything from Apple Pay to order tracking), response to this round of classic logo apparel has been great. Orders from last week started going out over the weekend, and hundreds more are shipping today.

It’s too late now to get an order in for Christmas, no matter where you live, but it’s not too late to place an order from this batch of shirts and hoodies. But, we’ll probably close the store to new orders tomorrow (Tuesday), so don’t wait. My sincere thanks to everyone who’s bought one (or in many cases, more than one).

 ★ 

Unsurprisingly given that I went a few years without selling DF-branded shirts, while I procrastinated on launching a modernized new store (long story short: Shopify is a killer platform — the new store now supports everything from Apple Pay to order tracking), response to this round of classic logo apparel has been great. Orders from last week started going out over the weekend, and hundreds more are shipping today.

It’s too late now to get an order in for Christmas, no matter where you live, but it’s not too late to place an order from this batch of shirts and hoodies. But, we’ll probably close the store to new orders tomorrow (Tuesday), so don’t wait. My sincere thanks to everyone who’s bought one (or in many cases, more than one).

Read More 

Another week with another outstanding indie developer whom I’m delighted to thank for sponsoring DF. This week, it’s Sophiestication Software promoting the return of CoverSutra — a previous hit from the “delicious” era of Mac apps that is now back and better than ever.

After over a decade, the rejuvenated (reanimated?) CoverSutra has been reimagined as a sleek, standalone music player for your Mac that lives in your menu bar, giving you seamless access to your music library. Instantly search by album, artist, or song — all without breaking your workflow. Some of what’s new:

Standalone music player: No Music app required.
Instant music search: Find tracks anytime, anywhere.
Global keyboard shortcuts: Control playback from any app.

Available now on the Mac App Store for just $4.99 — and a free upgrade for CoverSutra 3.0 customers. Five bucks, one time, and it’s yours to keep. And it’s just so polished, so simple, and so nice.

 ★ 

Another week with another outstanding indie developer whom I’m delighted to thank for sponsoring DF. This week, it’s Sophiestication Software promoting the return of CoverSutra — a previous hit from the “delicious” era of Mac apps that is now back and better than ever.

After over a decade, the rejuvenated (reanimated?) CoverSutra has been reimagined as a sleek, standalone music player for your Mac that lives in your menu bar, giving you seamless access to your music library. Instantly search by album, artist, or song — all without breaking your workflow. Some of what’s new:

Standalone music player: No Music app required.
Instant music search: Find tracks anytime, anywhere.
Global keyboard shortcuts: Control playback from any app.

Available now on the Mac App Store for just $4.99 — and a free upgrade for CoverSutra 3.0 customers. Five bucks, one time, and it’s yours to keep. And it’s just so polished, so simple, and so nice.

Read More 

This is why it’s more than vanity to put your name on your work, whatever your work is — it shows you take responsibility for its validity.

Robby Soave, writing at Reason, “Pete Hegseth’s Acceptance to West Point Is a Story”:

Here’s what happened. On Wednesday, Hegseth posted on X that
ProPublica — which he described as a “Left Wing hack group” — was planning to publish a bombshell report contradicting Hegseth’s
account that he had been accepted to West Point in 1999.

Hegseth set the record straight by publishing his letter of
acceptance, signed by West Point’s superintendent, Lieutenant
General Daniel Christman of the U.S. Army.

But that article never materialized.

ProPublica’s editor Jesse Eisinger thus defended his
organization’s behavior. “We asked West Pt public affairs, which
told us twice on the record that he hadn’t even applied there,”
explained Eisinger. “We reached out. Hegseth’s spox gave us his
acceptance letter. We didn’t publish a story. That’s journalism.”

Eisinger is correct. ProPublica’s reporter did his job: He checked
and double-checked a story. The mistake was made by West Point’s
communications department, which twice contended — falsely — that Hegseth had never applied to the military academy.

In a tweet thread, Eisinger explained what happened. First, his
reporter contacted the West Point public affairs office to inquire
about Hegseth’s claim that he was accepted there. The reporter was
told by West Point, in no uncertain terms, that Hegseth had never
even applied there.

After being presented with unequivocal evidence to the contrary,
West Point backpedaled. “A review of our records indicates Mr.
Peter Hegseth was offered admission to West Point in 1999 but did
not attend,” said the school in a statement.

There’s an argument being made (including by Soave, as his headline makes clear) that ProPublica should have still published a story about this, but that rather than it being a story about Hegseth having lied about being accepted to West Point in 1999, it should instead have turned into a story about West Point public relations having wrongly told ProPublica that not only had Hegseth not been accepted, that he’d never even applied.

I’m no fan of Hegseth, to say the least, but I concur that this was still a story worth publishing, albeit a very different one. The grievance wing of the current flavor of Republicanism would have you believe West Point PR deliberately lied to ProPublica. That doesn’t make sense to me. I do think it’s rather remarkable, and fortunate for everyone involved, that Hegseth not only kept his letter of acceptance, but had it readily available to scan and post publicly. That put the original story to rest.

But even if Hegseth didn’t have that acceptance letter readily available, and ProPublica had taken West Point PR at its word and published their turns-out-to-be-false story as originally intended — which could have happened simply if Hegseth’s lawyer hadn’t responded within the absurdly tight one-hour window ProPublica offered in their email asking for comment — the truth surely would have come out. ProPublica’s report — if they had published it — would have created a scandal, Hegseth and his supporters would have pushed back, and with the actual truth on their side, it surely would have come out. ProPublica would have had to retract their story, and would have damaged their future credibility, and West Point would have taken even more of a reputational hit.

But even if a West Point PR spokesperson, or even their entire public relations team, had been tempted to lie about Hegseth having been accepted, surely they would have quickly realized that such a lie could not stand for long and would, with certainty, backfire. Both West Point and ProPublica dodged a bullet from this becoming a bigger — and from their mutual perspectives, worse — story than it is now. This only makes sense as a mistake on the part of West Point public relations, not a lie intended to further damage Hegseth’s already deeply-troubled nomination to head the Defense Department.1

But can I prove it was a mistake, not a lie? No. And even if it was an honest mistake, how did it happen? Who committed it? The answers to those questions would make for a worthwhile story to pursue.2 And more specifically, the answer to who isn’t “West Point”. It’s a person or persons who work at West Point’s public relations team. “The Yankees” didn’t drop a routine fly ball that cost them the World Series. Aaron Judge did — and he has taken full responsibility and accountability for it. I think that’s who Judge is — the sort of consummate team player who takes personal responsible for mistakes and shortcomings, and defers to team credit for his personal accomplishments and successes, not the other way around — but it’s also the simple truth that we all saw it happen. That’s what makes sports so popular. It’s real, and we get to watch it all happen with our own eyes.

When a statement is attributed to “a spokesperson” from a company or institution, the world doesn’t know who that spokesperson is. Only the reporter or writer, and perhaps their editors. There is an explicit lack of accountability attributing statements to an institution rather than to specific people. We even have different pronouns — it’s institutions that do things, but only people who do things. Who is the question.

This whole thing brings to mind The Verge’s policy change on background sourcing three years ago. Nilay Patel wrote then:

The main way this happens is that big companies take advantage of
a particular agreement in the media called “background.” Being “on
background” means that they tell things to reporters, but those
reporters agree to not specifically attribute that information to
a person by name. Oftentimes, companies will make things
significantly worse and also insist that background information be
paraphrased, further obscuring both specific details and the
source of those details.

There are many reasons a reporter might agree to learning
information on background, but importantly, being on background is
supposed to be an agreement.

But the trend with big tech companies now is to increasingly treat
background as a default or even a condition of reporting. That
means reporters are now routinely asked to report things without
being able to attribute them appropriately, and readers aren’t
being presented with clear sources of information.

This all certainly feeds into the overall distrust of the media,
which has dire consequences in our current information landscape,
but in practice, it is also hilariously stupid. […]

This is bad, so we’re going to reset these expectations as loudly
as possible.

From now on, the default for communications professionals and
people speaking to The Verge in an official capacity will be “on
the record.”
We will still honor some requests to be on background, but at
our discretion and only for specific reasons that we can
articulate to readers.

I’ve largely agreed with The Verge’s stance on this from the start, but I’ve also thought they’ve taken it to an almost comical extreme, insisting on attaching spokespeople’s names to even anodyne company statements. This West Point / ProPublica near-fiasco has me reconsidering my skepticism toward The Verge’s obstinacy on this. It occurs to me now that The Verge’s adamancy on this issue isn’t merely for the benefit of their readers. Putting one’s name on a statement heightens the personal stakes. This is why it’s more than vanity to put your name on your work, whatever your work is — it shows you take responsibility for its validity.3

Presume for the moment that I’m correct that this was an honest mistake on the part of someone at West Point. I can’t help but think they’d have been less likely to make the mistake — more likely to have double-checked whatever records West Point keeps about decades-ago applications and acceptance decisions, and thus to discover that Hegseth had in fact been accepted — if their own names were on the line, not just “West Point”. And even if I’m wrong and it was a lie intended to sabotage Hegseth’s nomination, it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone committing that lie with their name attached to it.

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple plans to stop selling the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and
third-generation iPhone SE in European Union countries later this
month, to comply with a regulation that will soon require
newly-sold smartphones with wired charging to be equipped with a
USB-C port in those countries, according to French blog
iGeneration. All three of these iPhone models are still
equipped with a Lightning port for wired charging.

In a paywalled report today, the website said the iPhone models
will no longer be sold through Apple’s online store and retail
stores in the European Union as of December 28, which is when the
regulation goes into force.

It was never clear to me whether this regulation only applied to new devices, or to existing ones. But I guess it applies to existing ones. Until the expected next-gen iPhone SE ships early next year, the lowest-priced new iPhone in the EU will be the iPhone 15, which starts at $700 in the U.S. and around €860 in Europe. (Apple’s prices vary slightly between EU countries.)

 ★ 

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple plans to stop selling the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and
third-generation iPhone SE in European Union countries later this
month, to comply with a regulation that will soon require
newly-sold smartphones with wired charging to be equipped with a
USB-C port in those countries, according to French blog
iGeneration. All three of these iPhone models are still
equipped with a Lightning port for wired charging.

In a paywalled report today, the website said the iPhone models
will no longer be sold through Apple’s online store and retail
stores in the European Union as of December 28, which is when the
regulation goes into force.

It was never clear to me whether this regulation only applied to new devices, or to existing ones. But I guess it applies to existing ones. Until the expected next-gen iPhone SE ships early next year, the lowest-priced new iPhone in the EU will be the iPhone 15, which starts at $700 in the U.S. and around €860 in Europe. (Apple’s prices vary slightly between EU countries.)

Read More 

Nifty new convert-to-Markdown library from a small indie development shop named Microsoft:

The MarkItDown library is a utility tool for converting various
files to Markdown (e.g., for indexing, text analysis, etc.)

It presently supports:

PDF (.pdf)
PowerPoint (.pptx)
Word (.docx)
Excel (.xlsx)
Images (EXIF metadata, and OCR)
Audio (EXIF metadata, and speech transcription)
HTML (special handling of Wikipedia, etc.)
Various other text-based formats (csv, json, xml, etc.)

The API is simple:

from markitdown import MarkItDown

markitdown = MarkItDown()
result = markitdown.convert(“test.xlsx”)
print(result.text_content)

Via Stephan Ango (CEO of the excellent, popular Markdown writing and note-taking app Obsidian), who also points out that Google Docs added Markdown export a few months ago. I’ve never used Google Docs other than to read documents created by others, but MarkItDown seems like a library I might make great use of. “MarkItDown” is even a great name. What a world.

Not bad for a 20-year-old syntax.

 ★ 

Nifty new convert-to-Markdown library from a small indie development shop named Microsoft:

The MarkItDown library is a utility tool for converting various
files to Markdown (e.g., for indexing, text analysis, etc.)

It presently supports:

PDF (.pdf)
PowerPoint (.pptx)
Word (.docx)
Excel (.xlsx)
Images (EXIF metadata, and OCR)
Audio (EXIF metadata, and speech transcription)
HTML (special handling of Wikipedia, etc.)
Various other text-based formats (csv, json, xml, etc.)

The API is simple:

from markitdown import MarkItDown

markitdown = MarkItDown()
result = markitdown.convert(“test.xlsx”)
print(result.text_content)

Via Stephan Ango (CEO of the excellent, popular Markdown writing and note-taking app Obsidian), who also points out that Google Docs added Markdown export a few months ago. I’ve never used Google Docs other than to read documents created by others, but MarkItDown seems like a library I might make great use of. “MarkItDown” is even a great name. What a world.

Not bad for a 20-year-old syntax.

Read More 

Like Viticci, I remain largely skeptical and uncomfortable with AI for purposes of generating original new stuff — writing, imagery, whatever. But as an assistive agent, it’s quite remarkable today and improving at a fast clip.

Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories “Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.2: A Deep Dive into Working with Siri and ChatGPT, Together”:

In testing the updated Writing Tools with ChatGPT integration,
I’ve run into some limitations that I will cover below, but I also
had two very positive experiences with the Notes app that I want
to mention here since they should give you an idea of what’s
possible.

In my first test, I was working with a note that contained a list
of payments for my work at MacStories and Relay FM, plus the
amount of taxes I was setting aside each month. The note
originated in Obsidian, and after I pasted it into Apple
Notes, it lost all its formatting.

There were no proper section headings, the formatting was
inconsistent between paragraphs, and the monetary amounts had been
entered with different currency symbols for EUR. I wanted to make
the note look prettier with consistent formatting, so I opened the
“Compose” field of Writing Tools and sent ChatGPT the following
request:

This is a document that describes payments I sent to myself each
month from two sources: Relay FM and MacStories. The currency is
always EUR. When I mention “set aside”, it means I set aside a
percentage of those combined payments for tax purposes. Can you
reformat this note in a way that makes more sense?

I hit Return, and after a few seconds, ChatGPT reworked my text
with a consistent structure organized into sections with bullet
points and proper currency formatting. I was immediately
impressed, so I accepted the suggested result, and I ended up with
the same note, elegantly formatted just like I asked.

The other day a friend pointed out that using ChatGPT (and the like) for automation purposes is making real the original promise of AppleScript — being able to describe automation tasks using natural language. As I wrote long ago, the idea behind AppleScript was noble, but the truth is that it is a programming language, and in practice it has ultimately frustrated everyone. Programmers find it weird and clumsy compared to scripting languages that don’t attempt to hide that they’re programming languages, and non-programmers find it confusing because it doesn’t really parse natural language at all — it only parses a very specific syntax that happens to look like natural language, but isn’t like natural language is used or understood at all.

Here’s the nut of my aforementioned 2005 piece, “The English-Likeness Monster”:

In English, these two statements ought to be considered
synonymous:

path of fonts folder of user domain

path to fonts folder from user domain

But in AppleScript, they are not, and rather are brittlely
dependent on the current context. In the global scope, the
StandardAdditions OSAX wants “path TO ” and “ FROM user
domain”; in a System Events tell block, System Events wants “path
OF ” and “ OF user domain”.

The idea was, and I suppose still is, that AppleScript’s
English-like facade frees you from worrying about
computer-science-y jargon like classes and objects and properties
and commands, and allows you to just say what you mean and have it
just work.

But saying what you mean, in English, almost never “just works”
and compiles successfully as AppleScript, and so to be productive
you still have to understand all of the ways that AppleScript
actually works. But this is difficult, because the language syntax
is optimized for English-likeness, rather than being optimized for
making it clear just what the fuck is actually going on.

But LLMs really do just parse natural language. That doesn’t mean they’re always capable of doing what you want, but the best way to try to get them to do what you want is the same, whether you have a computer science degree or have never written a program in your life: describe what you want as clearly as possible in plain natural language. Here’s Viticci’s second example:

The second example of ChatGPT and Writing Tools applied to regular
MacStories work involves our annual MacStories Selects
awards. Before getting together with the MacStories team
on a Zoom call to discuss our nominees and pick winners, we
created a shared note in Apple Notes where different writers
entered their picks. When I opened the note, I realized that I was
behind others and forgot to enter the different categories of
awards in my section of the document. So I invoked ChatGPT’s
Compose menu under a section heading with my name and asked:

Can you add a section with the names of the same categories that
John used? Just the names of those categories.

That worked too, leading Viticci to observe:

Years ago, I would have had to do a lot of copying and pasting,
type it all out manually, or write a shortcut with regular
expressions to automate this process. Now, the “automation” takes
place as a natural language command that has access to the
contents of a note and can reformat it accordingly.

Like Viticci, I remain largely skeptical and uncomfortable with AI for purposes of generating original new stuff — writing, imagery, whatever. But as an assistive agent, it’s quite remarkable today and improving at a fast clip.

Not only is using Apple Intelligence for automation more accessible (in every sense) than writing a programming script or creating a Shortcut, it’s also something we’re all much more likely to do for a one-time task. I often create scripts, shortcuts, and macros to automate tasks that recur with some frequency; I seldom do for tasks that I’m only going to do once. But why not use Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT to save a few minutes of tedium?

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Ryan Christoffel, also at 9to5Mac:

There are two key features that will are part of iOS 18.2,
but aren’t yet ready for the Mac yet:

Genmoji
Mail app redesign

Genmoji are an especially unfortunate omission, as they’re
available on both iPhone and iPad with iOS and iPadOS 18.2.
Meanwhile the Mail app redesign is currently iPhone-exclusive, so
it’s missing from both the Mac and iPad in these next software
updates.

The omission of Genmoji creation in MacOS 15.2, and the omission of the new AI inbox categorization features in Mail on both iPad and Mac, aren’t surprises — they weren’t in any of the betas for these .2 OS updates. But it is a weirdly glaring omission. Apple itself started promoting screenshots of the Apple Intelligence inbox categorization in Mail for Mac back in October, when the .1 OS updates shipped with the initial round of Apple Intelligence features.

I am reliably informed that the new Mail categorization features are coming soon to iPad and Mac, which I suspect means in the .3 updates. But the first .3 betas aren’t out yet.

 ★ 

Ryan Christoffel, also at 9to5Mac:

There are two key features that will are part of iOS 18.2,
but aren’t yet ready for the Mac yet:

Genmoji
Mail app redesign

Genmoji are an especially unfortunate omission, as they’re
available on both iPhone and iPad with iOS and iPadOS 18.2.
Meanwhile the Mail app redesign is currently iPhone-exclusive, so
it’s missing from both the Mac and iPad in these next software
updates.

The omission of Genmoji creation in MacOS 15.2, and the omission of the new AI inbox categorization features in Mail on both iPad and Mac, aren’t surprises — they weren’t in any of the betas for these .2 OS updates. But it is a weirdly glaring omission. Apple itself started promoting screenshots of the Apple Intelligence inbox categorization in Mail for Mac back in October, when the .1 OS updates shipped with the initial round of Apple Intelligence features.

I am reliably informed that the new Mail categorization features are coming soon to iPad and Mac, which I suspect means in the .3 updates. But the first .3 betas aren’t out yet.

Read More 

Chance Miller has a good rundown for 9to5Mac:

The update includes major new Apple Intelligence features,
upgrades to the Camera Control on iPhone 16, a redesign for the
Mail app, and much more.

The new Apple Intelligence features lead the list, and certainly lead Apple’s marketing, but there’s quite a bit else new in 18.2 too.

 ★ 

Chance Miller has a good rundown for 9to5Mac:

The update includes major new Apple Intelligence features,
upgrades to the Camera Control on iPhone 16, a redesign for the
Mail app, and much more.

The new Apple Intelligence features lead the list, and certainly lead Apple’s marketing, but there’s quite a bit else new in 18.2 too.

Read More 

Katie Robinson, reporting for The New York Times:

After President-elect Donald J. Trump announced a cascade of
cabinet picks last month, the editorial board of The Los Angeles
Times decided it would weigh in. One writer prepared an editorial
arguing that the Senate should follow its traditional process for
confirming nominees, particularly given the board’s concerns about
some of his picks, and ignore Mr. Trump’s call for so-called
recess appointments.

The paper’s owner, the billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, had other ideas.

Hours before the editorial was set to be sent to the printer
for the next day’s newspaper, Dr. Soon-Shiong told the
opinion department’s leaders that the editorial could not be
published unless the paper also published an editorial with
an opposing view.

Baffled by his order and with the print deadline approaching,
editors removed the editorial, headlined “Donald Trump’s cabinet
choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should
be.” It never ran.

I’m not going to keep pointing to the ways Soon-Shiong is debasing the once-great LA Times. Until and if he sells it, which I don’t expect him to do, it’s over. What the LA Times was is gone. That sounds like hyperbole but it’s the obvious truth. One jackass columnist or even a fabulist reporter won’t sink an entire newspaper’s credibility. The Judith Miller reporting on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq was a disaster for the New York Times 20 years ago, but while that saga did lasting damage to the NYT’s credibility, it didn’t sink the ship. But an owner like Soon-Shiong can sink the ship. The LA Times isn’t really a newspaper anymore — it’s a vanity rag.

I’m just fantasizing here, but someone with money should consider sweeping into Los Angeles and setting up a rival publication, and poaching all the talent from the Times. I’d have suggested Jeff Bezos until recently, but, well, not anymore. Off the top of my head: Marc Benioff (who now owns Time magazine) or Laurene Powell Jobs (whose Emerson Collective is the majority owner of The Atlantic), perhaps?

The newspaper business, alas, isn’t what it used to be. When it was thriving, local competition would have already been in place. Even small cities had at least two rival papers. Now, New York might be the only city in America left with any true competition between newspapers.

 ★ 

Katie Robinson, reporting for The New York Times:

After President-elect Donald J. Trump announced a cascade of
cabinet picks last month, the editorial board of The Los Angeles
Times decided it would weigh in. One writer prepared an editorial
arguing that the Senate should follow its traditional process for
confirming nominees, particularly given the board’s concerns about
some of his picks, and ignore Mr. Trump’s call for so-called
recess appointments.

The paper’s owner, the billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, had other ideas.

Hours before the editorial was set to be sent to the printer
for the next day’s newspaper, Dr. Soon-Shiong told the
opinion department’s leaders that the editorial could not be
published unless the paper also published an editorial with
an opposing view.

Baffled by his order and with the print deadline approaching,
editors removed the editorial, headlined “Donald Trump’s cabinet
choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should
be.” It never ran.

I’m not going to keep pointing to the ways Soon-Shiong is debasing the once-great LA Times. Until and if he sells it, which I don’t expect him to do, it’s over. What the LA Times was is gone. That sounds like hyperbole but it’s the obvious truth. One jackass columnist or even a fabulist reporter won’t sink an entire newspaper’s credibility. The Judith Miller reporting on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq was a disaster for the New York Times 20 years ago, but while that saga did lasting damage to the NYT’s credibility, it didn’t sink the ship. But an owner like Soon-Shiong can sink the ship. The LA Times isn’t really a newspaper anymore — it’s a vanity rag.

I’m just fantasizing here, but someone with money should consider sweeping into Los Angeles and setting up a rival publication, and poaching all the talent from the Times. I’d have suggested Jeff Bezos until recently, but, well, not anymore. Off the top of my head: Marc Benioff (who now owns Time magazine) or Laurene Powell Jobs (whose Emerson Collective is the majority owner of The Atlantic), perhaps?

The newspaper business, alas, isn’t what it used to be. When it was thriving, local competition would have already been in place. Even small cities had at least two rival papers. Now, New York might be the only city in America left with any true competition between newspapers.

Read More 

Ev Williams, writing the backstory of, and raison d’être for Mozi:

And here we are, 20+ years later, with address books full of
partial, duplicate, and outdated information. Perhaps the reason
for this is that social networks (or the social network) solved
this problem — for a while. When Facebook was ubiquitous it was
probably a pretty good reflection of many people’s real-life
relationships. It told you where they lived, who you knew in
common, and all kinds of other details.

Another idea that seemed obvious was that, given how deeply social
humans are, social products would dominate the internet. Ten to
fifteen years ago, this seemed inevitable.

But something else happened instead.

Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant
receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the
quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people
you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for
attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t
as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their
waking hours making “content.”

In other words, social media became … media.

To tell you the truth, I think there are positive aspects of this
evolution (perhaps I’ll get into that in another post). But we
clearly lost something.

This whole piece is so good, so clear. This distinction between social networking and social media is obvious in hindsight, but only in hindsight. Williams posted it on Medium (natch), but Mozi’s website links directly to it for their “About” page. I’m excited about this. I think they’re on to something here. It’s even a great name.

 ★ 

Ev Williams, writing the backstory of, and raison d’être for Mozi:

And here we are, 20+ years later, with address books full of
partial, duplicate, and outdated information. Perhaps the reason
for this is that social networks (or the social network) solved
this problem — for a while. When Facebook was ubiquitous it was
probably a pretty good reflection of many people’s real-life
relationships. It told you where they lived, who you knew in
common, and all kinds of other details.

Another idea that seemed obvious was that, given how deeply social
humans are, social products would dominate the internet. Ten to
fifteen years ago, this seemed inevitable.

But something else happened instead.

Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant
receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the
quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people
you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for
attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t
as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their
waking hours making “content.”

In other words, social media became … media.

To tell you the truth, I think there are positive aspects of this
evolution (perhaps I’ll get into that in another post). But we
clearly lost something.

This whole piece is so good, so clear. This distinction between social networking and social media is obvious in hindsight, but only in hindsight. Williams posted it on Medium (natch), but Mozi’s website links directly to it for their “About” page. I’m excited about this. I think they’re on to something here. It’s even a great name.

Read More